WND EXCLUSIVE

Public school teaching: 'There is no god but Allah'

Parent sues over mandatory Islamic indoctrination

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.

A fight has erupted over the mandatory Islamic indoctrination imposed on students by a public school, including reciting the Islamic oath of allegiance called the shahada, which states, “There is no god but Allah.”

The Thomas More Law Center is representing Richard Penkoski in his dispute with Mountain Ridge Middle School in West Virginia.

It is Penkoski’s 13-year-old daughter who, along with her classmates, “were being subjected to Islamic indoctrination under the guise of teaching about world religions,” TMLC announced Tuesday.

Among the points of contention, on May 14, his seventh-grade daughter “brought home a packet of lessons and assignments which included the following: Write the shahada, the Islamic conversion creed, ‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah,” in Arabic as part of ‘calligraphy’ practice.”

They also were told: “Fast for 24 hours and give lunch money and food to a food bank, to sympathize with Muslims going through Ramadan. Read chapters from the Quran. Learn the Five Pillars of Islam.”

TMLC said “the lessons and assignments propagandized the students by downplaying the violent nature of Islam.”

Penkoski, who hosts an online Christian ministry called Warriors for Christ, contacted the school when his daughter brought home the Islamic teachings, and he asked TMLC to look into the legal aspects.

He charged that it pushed far beyond what ordinarily would be expected in a class about world religions, because of the disparity with teachings about other religions.

“Most of the faith aspects of Christianity and Judaism were stripped from the lesson plan by the teacher. Students were not given calligraphy writing assignments in Judaism, or Christianity, only Islam,” he said.

“This is typical of the public school systems across the country,” said Richard Thompson, TMLC’s president and chief counsel. “Witless school officials have turned classrooms into Islamic indoctrination centers. They promote Islam in ways that would be unthinkable for Christianity or any other religion because they fear a lawsuit by the ACLU.”

He explained: “Teachers sugar coat Islam. They don’t tell students about Islam’s barbaric brutality, where women and young girls are sold into slavery and used as sex slaves, where men and women are stoned to death and burned alive – all in the name of Islam and the Quran.”

TMLC said it was one of several cases it has agreed to address “concerning Islamic indoctrination in American public schools.”

In fact, there have been many similar cases in recent years.

Last year, WND reported a middle school in Chatham, New Jersey, used a cartoon video to teach the Five Pillars of Islam to seventh-grade students.

Seventh graders in the school were taught: “May God help us all find the true faith, Islam.”

Also taught in the video is the the Muslim prayer of conversion.

The parents say no other religion is taught nearly to this level of detail in the “world cultures and geography” class.

Here are excerpts from the video:

Here’s the promotion used in school encouraging kids to adopt Islam:

Videos, as well as field trips to mosques and other techniques, are used to teach the Five Pillars of Islam in public schools across the U.S. It has been going on since at least 2011, but in most school districts parents are either unaware of the teachings, are clueless about the exact content or simply don’t care.

“There is a big difference between education and indoctrination,” U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said in a statement about an earlier dispute.

“It is reprehensible that our school system has exhibited this double-standard, more concerned with teaching the practices of Islam than the history of Christianity. Tennessee parents have a right to be outraged and I stand by them in this fight.”

WND also reported when Liberty High School in Frisco, Texas, set up an Islamic prayer room specifically for Muslim students to pray on campus during school hours. The same type of prayer rooms have been set up in high schools in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and other school districts.

In 2016, Bluff City, Tennessee, Middle School parent Michelle Edmisten alerted the community to a textbook that used a seventh-grade social studies class to promote “the religion used by terrorists to justify violent acts against Americans.

And the year before, Chicago’s Vernon Hills High School held a “Walk a Mile in Her Hijab Day” as non-Muslim female students were encouraged to wear the hijab or Islamic head covering.

The event was sponsored by the school’s 10-member Muslim Student Association, a known front group for the Muslim Brotherhood and an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror-financing trial ever held on U.S. soil.

The district had promoted its trip for students to an Islamic center: “Students who choose to attend the [Rocky Heights Middle School] world religion field trip are expected to respect the dress code of the host facility,” the school said in a statement posted online.

The explanation followed a firestorm of criticism of the school for announcing the field trip for seventh-grade students and including a note that the Shariah dress code could be enforced.

The note sent to families, according to a report from Islam expert and commentator Pamela Geller, said: “The world religions field trip is next Tuesday, January 13. We will be visiting the Denver Mosque, the Assumption Greek Orthodox Cathedral, and the Rodef-Shalom Synagogue. We will then eat lunch at Park Meadows Food Court. Students must either bring a sack lunch or money to purchase lunch at the food court.”

It continued: “THERE IS A DRESS CODE FOR THIS TRIP: All students must wear appropriate long pants. Ankles must be covered. Girls must bring wide scarves or hooded sweatshirts for the mosque.”

In 2014 when a Marine veteran dad objected to similar teaching of his daughter from La Plata High School in Maryland, school officials took the most direct approach to having their way: they banned him from school property.